A Grand Forks, North Dakota police report suggests Destiny Weaver may’ve been dead 12 days when her body was transported to Minnesota in the trunk of a car by her mother and boyfriend. –synopsis of a Grand Forks Herald story 2-22-07

What does it mean

to name a baby girl Destiny Weaver,

as if she herself might have a chance

to spin her own life’s story?

Not—a car heads from Grand Forks

along a Minnesota highway to Thief River Falls,

stops at a St. Hilaire convenience store,

while twenty below, frozen air accosts

cheeks, wrist.

Witnesses see the body of a child,

a two-year-old, wrapped in a blanket,

taken from the trunk of the car

by deputies who shouldn’t have to understand.

When they remove her

from the most heinous of mangers

in a most unpredictable resurrection

that they are wise men

reluctantly learning how

someone who seems small can be

nearly impossible to lift—

Her swaddling clothes

woven inevitably into a shroud.

Backwards Karaoke

Supposed to swallow

what I know,

make it a song badgering

my belt from the inside.

Supposed to smile

along to “Love Will Keep Us Together”

at a great bar with cool curios hanging from the ceiling—

-an inner tube, a mannequin.

Nice pants well pressed against my perfect pelvis,

a gleaming microphone in my right hand,

my fingers, five fabulous metronomes, pulsing against it.

You’re six when you figure it out…maybe five.

And all the lyrics you’ve ever known

dribble down your throat, bad pabulum,

truly gruel.

Tomorrow, like every day, is my birthday.

Take note.

Nancy Devine teaches high school English in Grand Forks, North Dakota where she lives. Her poetry, short fiction and essays have appeared in online and print journals. She is the author of a chapbook of poems, “The Dreamed,” published by Finishing Line Press in 2016.